I thought that I would direct anyone who visits my blog to one of my friends reviews of Richard A Muller’s “Christ and Decree”. The paragraph below I feel is a great explanation of the evolution of reformed theology, from Augustine’s notions of Absolute Divine Simplicity. I have yet to read Muller’s book, even though it is at my finger tips, but I am currently working through a few other books at the moment. Though I have read quite a few excerpts from the book.

“while Muller highlights the interconnections between various Reformed loci, and he rightly places the Reformers in their Anselmic and Augustinian contexts, he does not seem to be aware of some the main implications of an Augustinian ontology. Augustine was famous for saying that God is his attributes. He writes, “The Godhead is absolutely simple essence, and therefore to be is then the same as to be wise” (Augustine 106). Therefore, if God’s attributes = his essence, and his essence is immutable, then an attribute such as “will” is also immutable. Consider the argument, understanding “simplicity” to be a great “=” sign. If A = B, and B = C, then A =D. Further, per this Augustinian gloss, then one must come to the conclusion that “to foreknow = to predestine.” If foreknow then equals predestine, and God foreknew the damned to reprobation, then given Augustinian simplicity one must conclude that God also predestined the damned to hell. This forces a reevaluation of the earlier claim that election is mediate while reprobation is immediate.Future Reformed historical theologians need to come to grips with a number of questions: given Augustinian simplicity entails the filioque, and given that Reformed Christological and soteriological distinctives stem from said simplicity, how then does the filioque impact Reformed soteriology. I do not fault Muller for not dealing with these questions. The scope of his work is simple (no pun intended) enough. Further, it is to his credit that he notes the connections between simplicity, extra-calvinisticum, and autotheos. It remains to future Reformed historians to face the challenges to Augustinian simplicity.” – Ansgar Olav